jimboss wrote:One thing that I don't really get - is why all Lance's sponsors are standing by him. Surely they can see the writing on the wall.

But are these sponsors now actively using him or his brand for anything?Will they renew the contracts when they expire?And considering Lance's penchant for law suits, it might just be safer and simpler to let the contracts lapse.

Possibly.

Still though, Nike et al have all released statements supporting Lance. It's a bad look.

Surely you could pay out the contract and sever ties with no risk of legal action. Would be much better for the brands involved.

And I suspect many will actively boycot brands that support Lance. If I was a brand, I'd want to mitigate against that risk for sure.

jules21 wrote:there's a guy i saw at the Audax Alpine Classic who was dressed up in all-Discovery Channel gear, with the Lance Trek bike - the whole deal, everything he was wearing and riding was Team DC/Lance based. i wonder how he feels now?

I'm not going to get into the Lance and LiveStrong thingy, but I would like to say something about survivorship, which is what the LA foundation was meant to be focusing on (again, I'm not going to get into the politics of that). I'm talking about this as someone who has had cancer and as someone who lost both grandmothers and almost my mother to cancer.

Quick summary about cancer and research:

*Cancer is an umbrella term that is used to describe situations where your own cells go wrong and start attacking the body. Your immune system is designed NOT to attack these cells (when they do, it's called an auto-immune disease), and so they grow out of control and form what's known as tumors.

*There are many ways cells can go wrong and there are many different types of cancer because of this.

*There is no real research (as far as I know) into a cure for cancer (as in the whole shebang), rather research is in to cures for individual cancers, or a group of cancers. While there is research into mechanisms that may end up curing cancer (gene therapies, virus programming etc), there will likely be no cure for cancer, but there may be cures for individual cancers.

Now we get to survivorship, and I'll talk here about my mum. My dear grey haired old mum was diagnosed with bladder cancer. A short time later, her mum (my grandma) was also diagnosed with bladder cancer. My grandmother died (but she was 97, so had a good innings) and my mother lost her bladder.

Survivorship is about how to deal with surviving cancer. It's hard. While she is now "cancer free", every time she gets a cold, or an infection, or starts to feel sick, she's scared the cancer has come back. Every time. It's like she's been given a temporary stay of execution and she's scared that she'll end up suffering as she did before, with the chemo and the surgery. She's scared she won't survive it this time, and worse, end up bed ridden, incoherent and mostly unconscious like her mother ended up. She has a urostomy bag to deal with, which is no fun at all, especially when she gets an infection or it slips or one of the kids hits her accidentally and causes a leak.

Yes, she's alive, and we're grateful for that, but she still suffers physically and psychologically from cancer every day.

Livestrong is meant to be about fighting the fight that you can win. In a very real sense, cancer can't be cured. Putting money into programs to help the sufferers and survivors (and their families) deal with it is worth a whole lot more, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others.

I don't care whether Livestrong does that or not, but if you're going to start arguing about the benefits of cancer research over cancer survivorship (before, during and after), then you're welcome to have a chat with my mum and she'll set you straight.

Oxford wrote:Yesterday at home whilst under the influence of drugs (legal and prescribed for my back pain and certainly not enhancing to performance) I decided to get out the LA books I had. I looked in vain and nowhere could I find the bits where he attributes his success to PEDs. The Chris Carmichael LA training book, the Brad Kearns "How Lance Does It" book and "It's not about the bike" (looked for the sub text its all about drugs). As a result I instituted a Farenheit 451 solution to my problem. Nice little bonfire on the BBQ yesterday. All of those books were gifts, so I am thankful I never expended personal funds on them.

If I had any Livestrong gear, they would be shredded and make it to the rag bin for cleaning dirty things, much like the dirty rider they represent.

Also glad I never gave to Livestrong itself in any way. I don't like the way many charities are run and distribute their funds, so only give to those I believe are worthy of my hard earned.

Burning his books is one approach, the other (more subtle) response is a Scottish library putting the Armstrong biography in the fiction section.

Baalzamon wrote:I'm thinking about asking oakley to send me some new bits for my jawbones. Yep in livestrong colours and want them gone

Funny, but only a fortnight ago (like a couple of days before the USADA 1000 page manifesto was posted online) I bought a pair of the Livestrong Oakley Jawbones...

The reason.... they were on mega-discount.

I think they were originally priced somewhere around $350. Got them for about $120 (wonder why.....??)

I needed a new pair of sunnies for running/cycling. came in a nice case, couple of pairs of lenses.

They still keep the sun out of my eyes and 99.9% of people wouldn't have a clue that they are the Armstrong ones

You could concider them Safe Cycling Australia colors. We've been pushing Oakley to pass some similar coloured sets our way for the supporters. It only ever seems like I'm on drugs.Interesting to note that the day the USADA report was released publicly, Retirestrong donations reportedly increased by $60,000USD. Some will never get it. His biggest supporters are the least interested in wading through the evidence. Dunce hats.

bigfriendlyvegan wrote:*There is no real research (as far as I know) into a cure for cancer (as in the whole shebang), rather research is in to cures for individual cancers, or a group of cancers...

It's a basic science methodology issue, not too different to cosmology research. Only by knowing a lot about all the individual cases can one be in the possible position of coming out with a "general theory", if ever there was one. Selling oneself as one who is seeking the cure for all cancers at this particular point in time is just duping the poorly informed of the society. Fact is, scientists are not ignoring the fundamental big picture question. For a start, all the basic research in molecular biology, genetics, amongst related fields are forming the framework to address this question. We just don't have the full knowledge yet. Yet again, with life expectancy into the 70-80s in recent decades, us human (cells) were never designed to live this long in the environment.

Well think it's going to be some black model paint for the front of my glasses, silver for the O on the side and some new socks. Looks like $10US from america, they are not on the Aus store so.. Might have to use a freight forward to get them

bigfriendlyvegan wrote:I'm not going to get into the Lance and LiveStrong thingy, but I would like to say something about survivorship, which is what the LA foundation was meant to be focusing on (again, I'm not going to get into the politics of that). I'm talking about this as someone who has had cancer and as someone who lost both grandmothers and almost my mother to cancer.

Quick summary about cancer and research:

*Cancer is an umbrella term that is used to describe situations where your own cells go wrong and start attacking the body. Your immune system is designed NOT to attack these cells (when they do, it's called an auto-immune disease), and so they grow out of control and form what's known as tumors.

*There are many ways cells can go wrong and there are many different types of cancer because of this.

*There is no real research (as far as I know) into a cure for cancer (as in the whole shebang), rather research is in to cures for individual cancers, or a group of cancers. While there is research into mechanisms that may end up curing cancer (gene therapies, virus programming etc), there will likely be no cure for cancer, but there may be cures for individual cancers.

Now we get to survivorship, and I'll talk here about my mum. My dear grey haired old mum was diagnosed with bladder cancer. A short time later, her mum (my grandma) was also diagnosed with bladder cancer. My grandmother died (but she was 97, so had a good innings) and my mother lost her bladder.

Survivorship is about how to deal with surviving cancer. It's hard. While she is now "cancer free", every time she gets a cold, or an infection, or starts to feel sick, she's scared the cancer has come back. Every time. It's like she's been given a temporary stay of execution and she's scared that she'll end up suffering as she did before, with the chemo and the surgery. She's scared she won't survive it this time, and worse, end up bed ridden, incoherent and mostly unconscious like her mother ended up. She has a urostomy bag to deal with, which is no fun at all, especially when she gets an infection or it slips or one of the kids hits her accidentally and causes a leak.

Yes, she's alive, and we're grateful for that, but she still suffers physically and psychologically from cancer every day.

Livestrong is meant to be about fighting the fight that you can win. In a very real sense, cancer can't be cured. Putting money into programs to help the sufferers and survivors (and their families) deal with it is worth a whole lot more, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others.

I don't care whether Livestrong does that or not, but if you're going to start arguing about the benefits of cancer research over cancer survivorship (before, during and after), then you're welcome to have a chat with my mum and she'll set you straight.

The above gets my vote because I have had a very close family member in that situation, and know just how important support really is.I have got a LiveStrong outfit and will have no problems wearing it when I do eventually get back on the bike, regardless of what happens with LA.Do I believe he used PED's.......of course he did........no one could do what he did without being on the juice.........

bigfriendlyvegan wrote:Livestrong is meant to be about fighting the fight that you can win. In a very real sense, cancer can't be cured. Putting money into programs to help the sufferers and survivors (and their families) deal with it is worth a whole lot more, in my opinion and in the opinion of many others.

I don't care whether Livestrong does that or not, but if you're going to start arguing about the benefits of cancer research over cancer survivorship (before, during and after), then you're welcome to have a chat with my mum and she'll set you straight.

Lance survived as a result of a great deal of basic research, as no doubt did your mum. By and large survivorship is conditioned on basic research, and future increases in survivorship percentages are conditioned on basic research. Whether or not pure cures ever arise.

However livestrong is even out of the testicular cancer research supporting biz, and has been for years. Another way to put it is by caring a bit more about todays sufferers, more sufferers will not avoid the suffering stage in the future.

I am with you bigfriendlyvegan - my mum is also a cancer survivor - ovarian cancer, breast cancer and secondaries from the breast cancer, the combined effect of which knocked her for 6 emotionally & whilst she survived, suffered from depression for propbably 15 years. It is truely remarkable that mum appears to have in fact recovered from depression.

No one is saying that support for dealing with the aftermath of cancer is a bad thing, or not needed or unimportant or not deserving of additional resources.

I would suggest that just about everyone has a personal story about either themselves, or a close friend or relative that has had a cancer and died, is battling cancer or is in remission and dealing with the psychological issues. I sure do, and it bites hard.

But Livestrong is first and foremost a PR machine. His linking of "cancer awareness" and the fraud of his performance is, IMO, despicable.

Alex Simmons/RST wrote:No one is saying that support for dealing with the aftermath of cancer is a bad thing, or not needed or unimportant or not deserving of additional resources.

I would suggest that just about everyone has a personal story about either themselves, or a close friend or relative that has had a cancer and died, is battling cancer or is in remission and dealing with the psychological issues. I sure do, and it bites hard.

But Livestrong is first and foremost a PR machine. His linking of "cancer awareness" and the fraud of his performance is, IMO, despicable.

I was jumping on to post exactly this. Everyone has been touched or affected by cancer. To an extent it has increasingly become a part of our everyday lives for many years now. Cancer awareness is pointless if the organisation's involved aren't raising awareness of cancer. That the man rides, eats, sleeps, buys the milk and morning paper while weighing a tad more on one side is not raising cancer awareness. I'd go further in saying that cancer awareness is no longer a priority in 2012. Continued scientific research and funding for early detection program's are what's required. If we can't cure it because research program's and clinical trials lack the dollars and I contract cancer, I won't be content in having known another ad on TV cost 30,000 for the week at the expense of my medication or that new surgical technique that never saw the light of day.

Alex Simmons/RST wrote:No one is saying that support for dealing with the aftermath of cancer is a bad thing, or not needed or unimportant or not deserving of additional resources.

I would suggest that just about everyone has a personal story about either themselves, or a close friend or relative that has had a cancer and died, is battling cancer or is in remission and dealing with the psychological issues. I sure do, and it bites hard.

But Livestrong is first and foremost a PR machine. His linking of "cancer awareness" and the fraud of his performance is, IMO, despicable.

Not disputing that. I just get royally po'd when people think that "curing cancer" is noble (and it is), but survivorship, support and awareness is very much less.

That Livestrong is a PR machine is not in doubt. It's a very, very clever piece of social engineering. I dread to think what LA would do if he went in to politics.

Alex Simmons/RST wrote:But Livestrong is first and foremost a PR machine. His linking of "cancer awareness" and the fraud of his performance is, IMO, despicable.

There are a lot more despicable behaviours on this planet, and this Livestrong can be seen as an attempt to payback the sins. Was it appropriate or successful? I guess this is where the argument lies at this point.

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